Sydney draft pastoral plan "seriously flawed": ACU lecturer

Citing weaknesses in its christological and ecclesiological
foundations, controversial ACU religious education lecturer Fr Daniel
Donovan, says that a draft pastoral plan for the Sydney archdiocese is
"seriously flawed" and has "shades of Opus Dei".

Catholica
reports that Fr Donovan, a lecturer at the School of Religious
Education at ACU National, made his assessment following requests from
a number of Sydney parishes to provide an analysis of the plan.

The
document was produced by the Archdiocesan Renewal Planning Committee
convened by Bishop Julian Porteous with the aim of "strengthening
Catholic life" in Sydney.

The plan is divided up into a list of
eight "priorities", including "evangelisation and spiritual renewal",
"clergy and religious renewal" and "parish renewal".

But Fr
Donovan says that the draft three-year pastoral plan, released in
March, is seriously flawed and needs to be taken back to the drawing
board for a "major re-write."

He accuses the document of
pandering to "various movements" like Opus Dei and the Neocatechumenal
Way rather than focusing on Christ, the Holy Spirit, the family and the
pastoral needs of the faithful.

He argues the document is
theologically flawed and needs to pay far greater heed to official
Vatican documents and the accepted teaching of the Catholic Church.

Citing
a number of Vatican-level documents, Fr Donovan says that the draft
plan's mission statement "presents an ecclesiology which has no
Christological foundation".

Quoting Asian Jesuit theologian
Aloysius Pieris, he warns that without this foundation "ecclesiology
... runs the danger of allowing the church to overdevelop as a massive
euro-ecclesiastical Body, that conceals Jesus, its head".

"Jesus
is sent by the Father to proclaim that the kingdom and salvation is
God's offer of grace and mercy to all creation. Surely the mission
statement for any Pastoral Plan should be based on the initiative of
God," Fr Donovan wrote.

As an alternative Christological
foundation, Fr Donovan proposes "God, the Father of mercies, through
the life, death and resurrection of the Son has sent the Holy Spirit to
transform humanity through an 'interior renewal and radical
conversion'".

Fr Donovan also accuses the document of confusion
over the term "inculturation", a theological concept, and
"enculturation", a sociological term that refers to the process of
assisting a person from another cultural background to accommodate to a
new cultural milieu.

The section on marriage also needs more depth, Fr Donovan continues, and "Church documents need to be used more meaningfully".

"Shades of Opus Dei"

According to Fr Donovan in his critique posted on Catholica,
"much of the Plan has shades of the Opus Dei especially in the areas of
education, youth formation and sacramental and human development
programs".

"A major failure of the Plan is that it has failed to
take note of the various movements (Opus Dei, Neocatechumenal Way etc)
and their infiltration of the Archdiocesan structures and ministries,"
Fr Donovan claims.

Fr Donovan proposes a "'listening' hierarchy
who are able 'connect' with the broad masses of the faithful and their
issues rather than endorsing the agenda of the various movements."

"My
recommendation would be for the Draft to be returned to the committee
for a serious rewrite. There is a need to represent the needs of the
people and not simply those of the clergy," Fr Donovan concludes.